Divorce hits children's maths results - but not their reading

Children of divorced parents tend to do worse at maths than those whose mother
and father stay together, a study has found.

But when parents split up it appears to have no impact on a child's reading ability relative to his or her peers, concluded American research.

Hyun Sik Kim, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison looked at how maths and reading scores changed among children whose parents split up when they were between the ages of six and nine. He also looked at their behaviour, in particular how they related to other children.

He said children fell behind their peers at maths and in developing social skills after their parents started divorce proceedings, and often failed to catch up.

He thought that maths and social skills suffered because of the stress of seeing their parents argue, fights over custody and destabilised living arrangements.

She did not speculate as to why her study, which followed 3,500 children, found that reading scores were unaffected. The study is published in the American Sociological Review.

His original hypothesis was that children's scored started to suffer before that, due to "intense marital conflict" in the period leading up to the parents' decision to get divorced.

However, she said: "My study finds that this is not the case".

Earlier this month a study by researchers at the Australian National University found that children of divorcees were more likely to have six before the age of 16 and leave home earlier, than those of still-married parents.